"What is going on?" we libertarians sometimes ask ourselves as the state
grows and infests ever more aspects of our lives. Our scholarship shows
the state to be evil. And experience proves the state to be evil, at least
as we interpret history. So we should be able to persuade the people who
support the state to back off. But we seem incapable of doing this. Why?

I have developed my own answer to this question. I propose that the
state is a living thing. As the body of a person is composed of cells,
so the body of a state is composed of people. As the cells of my body might
naturally be motivated to argue (if they have any public forums) for the
continuation and even the expansion of my life, so the people who comprise
the state are motivated to justify the continuation and expansion of the
state. This theory grows out of the new science of spontaneous order.1,2
In previous articles I have described aspects of my theory.3,4

In this article I will repeat some points and add a few new points.
In particular I will add a taxonomy, a way to classify living organizations.
Finally I will tell what this theory implies for the free nation movement.

A few disclaimers are necessary. First, I am not professionally employed
as a scientist and I do not know any scientists working in this field whom
I can approach for feedback, so I may be overextended in the speculations
which I present here. Further, my ideas are new and still changing; as
I write sometimes I see that an assumption I had made is only partially
correct and that more subtle analysis is needed. So I do not claim that
any of this is solid or final. And lastly, you will notice that I adopt
the thesis that life on Earth has evolved. Probably not all readers will
agree with this assumption.

We have been trained to think of organisms when we think of living things.
Generally an organism is a single living thing which is intact inside its
own skin, bark, cell membrane, or other outer extremity. But the new and
broader view of life challenges this view. William Morton Wheeler, for
instance, has suggested that a bee hive, and not a single bee, can usefully
be viewed as an organism.5

I have started to use our familiar word "organization" to name the broader
class which seems suggested by this study. Organizations include organisms
of course, since organisms are clearly organizations composed of smaller
components. But molecules, firms, and states also qualify as organizations.

Here I will list, perhaps in logical order, several attributes which
living organizations possess.

Organizations exist in a range of sizes, and larger organizations typically
are created from some combination of smaller organizations. Here are several
organizations, in order of size, which may be thought to form a hierarchy:
amino acids, RNA molecules, organelles, cells, organs, organisms, firms,
states.

As time passes the organizations which grow become larger and larger. In
the hierarchy just listed, the smallest organizations (amino acids) are
also the oldest, whereas the largest organizations (states) are the newest.

Organizations do not necessarily consist of homogenous parts. While the
organization of a family might consist entirely of humans, the organization
of a plantation might be usefully viewed to include: cotton plants, cotton
boll weevils, slaves, owners, suppliers, and customers.

The question of which organizations can succeed is determined first by
the laws of thermodynamics. Living organizations must consume resources,
by which I mean energy and raw materials. And so they must occasionally
refresh their supplies.

The question of which organizations can succeed is further determined by
the craft of the organizations. Since the resources which organizations
require exist in patterns within the universe, a successful organization
must adopt its actions to these patterns. Organizations adopt their actions
to patterns by following decision rules.

So the organizations which succeed are not necessarily nice. The rules
which determine whether an organization succeeds originate in physical
reality, and not our aesthetic sense.

Larger organizations grow because they enable exploitation of larger or
more complex patterns of resources than their smaller or simpler constituents
could exploit. Whether consciously or unconsciously, constituents combine
their actions in such a way that together they exploit a resource which
none of them individually could have exploited.6

When larger organizations form, thus exploiting a previously untapped resource,
the constituents typically will live better because of it. At least those
constituents which have joined "voluntarily" can be expected to enjoy a
higher standard of living because of the formation of the larger organization.

Each successful organization must possess and follow at least one decision
rule which enables it to sufficiently replenish its supply of resources.
Such a decision rule may be thought of as the essence of the organization,
since the organization can exist only because of this rule. Of course some
complex organizations such as humans possess not just one but numerous
decision rules.

Note that I can be both a member of a church and a member of a business
firm. So when organizations combine to form larger organizations, the combining
parts are not necessarily whole organizations, as we may commonly think
of them. Parts of me (whether of my body, my effort, or my money) can join
larger organizations. Note also that many businesses in America contribute
to both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. Thus we see that
organizational affiliations do not always fall into an orderly hierarchy,
but rather can appear to be a confusing mishmash, with overlapping and
even conflicting associations.

Since life in this universe seems to consistently offer greater opportunities
to those smaller organizations which succeed in finding ways to combine
in larger organizations, we should expect that presently surviving strains,
being the fruit of eons of such selection, will be disposed to seek new
ways to organize, after present demands for survival have been fulfilled.

The progress of living organizations in the universe seems to run as a
corollary to the second law of thermodynamics. Life increases as entropy
increases. Life grows in the zones of transition, such as the surface of
Earth, where energy and raw materials meet and mix.7

The points made above deal with organizations in general. But clearly
we see that there are different types of organizations. Some organizations
have characteristics which other organizations lack. I have noticed three
such characteristics, and named them "member-aware," "self-aware," and
"encoded." The accompanying table shows the eight
types of organizations which can be distinguished by the presence or absence
of each of these three characteristics.

In some organizations the members are aware of the existence of the
larger organizations. In other organizations this is not the case.

For example, the members of a club know about the club. But this is
not the case in the type of organization which produces a pencil.8
Notice that this organization includes the workers who make the steel that
goes into the saws of the loggers who cut the trees from which the shafts
of the pencils are cut.

Of course, since primitive organizations probably lack any mental capacity
of awareness, we need to include in the non-member-aware category all those
organizations composed of primitive members. For example, I suppose that
the cells which compose my body are not aware of me.

Some organizations possess a self-awareness, by which I mean these organizations
have headquarters which can make conscious decisions on behalf of the organizations.
Other organizations lack this trait.

For example, I would say that a labor union possess self-awareness,
in that it has a headquarters which knows that it can make decisions for
the organization. Whereas I would say that the charity which organizes
spontaneously in response to a catastrophe, such as a flood, lacks self-awareness,
in that it has no headquarters which knows that it can make decisions for
the organization.

Again we can separate out all organizations which seem to lack the capacity
of awareness, such as bacteria and other low-level life. None of these
could be self-aware.

Some organizations have an ability to reproduce themselves. I call this
"encoded" because I suppose that ability to reproduce requires that the
constitution (or the set of decision rules) of the organization be codified
somehow. Other organizations lack this trait.

For examples of encoded organizations, consider organisms. Organisms
have codes in their genetic material telling how to make new instances.
For examples of organizations which are not encoded consider most early
cities. These grew spontaneously and I would assert that they lack any
code telling how to make new instances.

Organizations which are encoded may equate generally with a "made" order.
Whereas organizations which are not encoded may equate with a "grown" order.
Hayek finds words in classical Greek for these two kinds of order: taxis
for
a "made" order; kosmos for a "grown" order.9

The model which I have sketched here suggests a framework within which
our human mental processes have evolved. This in turn suggests what behavior
we might expect from human minds.

Many libertarians invest heavily in the building of logical arguments.
It seems to me that these libertarians overrate the fruits of human minds
such as "truth" and "morality." In contrast I believe that our minds are
mostly pragmatic, constructing whatever notions might prove useful to survival.

I would say that "truth" exists in our minds because and to the extent
that it serves a practical function. In some information processing systems,
those which have evolved to a high enough level, there will be a need to
distinguish and to label those hypotheses which lead to reliable decision
rules. "Truth" is such a label. So truth is good. We need it. But to me
it is a category for sorting, not a deity.

Similarly I would say that "morality" exists in our minds because and
to the extent that it serves a practical function. As life advances it
often happens that circumstances become ripe for formation of new, and
often larger, organizations. I propose that morality can be explained as
a bias which makes existing organizations more likely to find the opportunities
to form new organizations.10 So morality
is good. We need it. But to me it is a useful bias, not a token of righteousness.

Since I see truth and morality thus, as useful but subordinate to the
processes necessary for survival, I think we should expect minds to be
self-serving before truthful or moral in our conception. One consequence
of this is that the ethics of the members of an organization will evolve
to conform with the circumstances in which the organization finds itself.

New rules will develop when circumstances change, such as when survival
in an existing niche can be enhanced by following a new set of rules, or
when extraordinary procreation and flourishing in a new niche are promised
but only by following a new set of rules. One generation of truth seekers
and moralizers may abhor the new rules, but a new generation will arise
which embraces the new rules. Thus we should expect the information processing
system of an organization to be truthful or moral  as we conceive truth
and morality  only when and if this serves survival.11

When environmental circumstances allow the possibility that a new organization
could succeed if existing organizations discover and follow a new set of
rules, then we may expect a trend to discover and then follow that new
set of rules. This trend will be limited by the costs and delays of discovering
and implementing the new set of rules (by the costs and delays of organizing),
but we should not expect the trend to be limited by our present morality.
The new organization will grow its own ethic.

To me this explains statism. Because the state succeeds as an organization,
giving benefits to the many people, and parts of people, whose active participation
makes the state succeed, we should expect that there will be an ethic which
supports the practice of statism. Statists think that they are doing the
right thing. In this model of life nothing is inherently immoral: it is
as acceptable for a statist to feed on a taxpayer as it is for a cannibal
to feed on a Christian, or for me to feed on oatmeal.

If this is all true  and let me admit that I am motivated to think it
is true because of my investment in the FNF approach  then it suggests that
statists will not be talked out of statism while statism promises benefits
to its adherents. And statism will promise benefits to its adherents while
environmental circumstances allow the state to succeed as an organization.

As such I question whether it is wise for libertarians working in an
environment such as America, which sustains a healthy and growing state,
to try to talk statists out of statism. The alternative which I suggest
through FNF is that we focus our energies on some small niche, remote from
the interests of powerful statists, where we can purchase autonomy and
there create an environment in which occasional seeds of state, which will
surely find their way in, will whither for want of those circumstances
which can sustain a state.

The way of organizing which I suggest through FNF fits the model of
life presented here insofar as I perceive that circumstances are now ripe
for a new form of organization to start growing on Earth. States have grown
among humans because some larger-than-human organizations were bound to
grow. But states have weaknesses, not the least of which is they make enemies
of many humans. So, given our present understanding, we may consciously
test a new and better form of larger-than-human organization, a nation
whose primary principle of organization is protection from parasitic states.
D

8 Leonard Reed, "I Pencil," Foundation for Economic
Education. To my
knowledge this essay deserves credit for originating the common use in
libertarian literature of the example of how many people take part in making
a simple pencil.

11 By "survival" here I intend to include the
broader sense in which a human might sacrifice herself in order that a
meme might survive (See Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 1976, Oxford
University Press). What survives here is organizations
 not organisms.

Richard Hammer, president of FNF, rarely listens to music and has
almost no ability to perform it. Nonetheless he enjoys singing, and regularly
joins a group of shapenote singers. He tries to compensate for what he
lacks, in ability to find the correct pitch, by giving extra volume.